Miao people

Compared to the Confucian principles traditionally exercised over women in some regions of China, the Miao culture is generally less strict in categorization of women’s roles in society. Miao women exercise relatively more independence, mobility and social freedom.[6] They are known to be strong willed and politically minded. They actively contribute to their communities in social welfare, education, arts and culture, and agricultural farming.

Miao women demonstrate great skill and artistry when making traditional clothing and handicrafts. They excel at embroidering, weaving, paper-cutting, batik, and intricate jewelry casting.
From vests, coats, hats, collars and cuffs, to full skirts, and baby carriers, the patterns on their clothes are extremely complicated and colorful with clean lines. Girls of around seven will learn embroidering from mothers and sisters, and by the time they are teenagers, they are quite deft. Additionally, Miao silver jewelry is distinctive for its design, style and craftsmanship. Miao silver jewelry is completely handmade, carved with fine decorative patterns. It’s not easy to make and there is not one final masterpiece exactly the same as another. The Miao embroidery and silver jewelry are highly valued, delicate and beautiful.

Silver jewelry is a highly valuable craftwork of the Miao people. Apart from being a cultural tradition, it also symbolises the wealth of Miao women.[7] As a Miao saying goes, “decorated with no silver or embroidery, a girl is not a girl”, Miao women are occasionally defined by the amount of silver jewelry she wears or owns.[7] It is especially important to wear heavy and intricate silver headdresses and jewelry during significant occasions and festivals, notably during weddings, funerals and springtime celebration.[7] Silver jewelry is an essential element of Miao marriages, particularly to the bride.[7] Miao families would begin saving silver jewellery for the girls at an early age, wishing their daughters could marry well with the large amount of silver jewelry representing the wealth of the family.[7] Although a growing Miao population is moving from rural Miao regions to cities, the new generation respects the families' silver heritage and is willing to pass on the practice as a cultural tradition more than a showcase of family wealth.[7]

Although Miao women are not strictly-governed, their social status is often seen as lower than that of men, as in most patriarchal societies. Be it in the subsistence economy or otherwise, men are the main economic force and provide the stable source of income for the family. Women are primarily involved in social welfare, domestic responsibilities, and additionally earn supplementary income.[6]

As tourism became a major economic activity to this ethnic group, Miao women gained more opportunities to join the labor force and earn an income. Women mostly take up jobs that require modern day customer service skills; for example, working as tour guides, selling craftwork and souvenirs, teaching tourists how to make flower wreaths, and even renting ethnic costumes.[6] These jobs require soft skills and hospitality and more visibility in public, but provide a low income.[6] On the contrary, Miao men take up jobs that require more physical strengths and less visibility in public, such as engineering roads, building hotels, boats and pavilions. These jobs generally provide a more stable and profitable source of income.[6]

The above example of unequal division of labor demonstrates, in spite of socioeconomic changes in China, men are still considered the financial backbone of the family.[6]

While the Miao people have had their own unique culture, the Confucian ideology exerted significant influences on this ethnic group. It is expected that men are the dominant figures and breadwinners of the family, while women occupy more domestic roles(like cooking and cleaning).[6] There are strict social standards on women to be “virtuous wives and good mothers”, and to abide by “three obediences and four virtues”, which include cultural moral specifications of women’s behavior.[6]

A Miao woman has some cultural freedom in marrying a man of her choice.[6] However, like many other cultures in Asia, there are strict cultural practices on marriage, one being clan exogamy. It is a taboo to marry someone within the same family clan name, even when the couple are not blood related or from the same community.[6]

In contrast to the common practice of the right of succession belonging to the firstborn son, the Miao’s inheritance descends to the youngest son.[6] The older sons leave the family and build their own residences, usually in the same province and close to the family.[6] The youngest son is responsible for living with and caring for the aging parents, even after marriage.[6] He receives a larger share of the family’s inheritance and his mother’s silver jewelry collection, which is used as bridal wealth or dowry.[6]

Some imperially commissioned Han Chinese chieftaincies assimilated with the Miao. Those became the ancestors of a part of the Miao population in Guizhou.[8]

The Hmong Tian clan in Sizhou began in the seventh century as a migrant Han Chinese clan.[9]

The origin of the Tunbao people traces back to the Ming dynasty when the Hongwu Emperor sent 300,000 Han Chinese male soldiers in 1381 to conquer Yunnan, with some of the men marrying Yao and Miao women.[10][11]

The presence of women presiding over weddings was a feature noted in "Southeast Asian" marriages, such as in 1667 when a Miao woman in Yunnan married a Chinese official.[12] Some Sinicization occurred, in Yunnan a Miao chief's daughter married a scholar in the 1600s who wrote that she could read, write, and listen in Chinese and read Chinese classics.[13]

According to a Tang dynasty myth, Miao people originated from Chi You. However, the oldest text known as The Tai Gong Six Secret Teachings that include Huang Di and Chi You (in short description) does not mention about who are the descendants of these two. No classic in Zhou dynasty mentions Chi You as the ancestor of Miao people. Hence, there are a big time gap between Tang and Zhou dynasty; approximately 1,500 years apart. There are no actual evidence that Chi You is Miao. During the communist cultural revolution, some historical texts and sites were destroyed, which left little evidence proving that Chi You was Miao. Nor can the modern Chinese authorities back their proof that Miao people are descendants of Chi You. However, according to the Tang dynasty myth, the Miao who descended from the Jiuli tribe led by Chiyou (Chinese: 蚩尤; pinyin: Chīyóu) were defeated at the Battle of Zhuolu (涿鹿; Zhuōlù, a defunct prefecture on the border of present provinces of Hebei and Liaoning) by the military coalition of Huang Di (黃帝; Huángdì) and Yan Di, leaders of the Huaxia (華夏; Huáxià) tribe as the two tribes struggled for supremacy of the Yellow River valley.

There is no universally accepted origin for the Miao (Hmong) people. Two different stories says that the Miao were either descended from people who used to live up in the north or that they were originally a Central Asian people several thousand years ago. The Miao may have ruled a kingdom known as Jiu Li 6,000 years ago. Chinese records record a San Miao (Three Miao) kingdom in modern Sichuan that existed around 2700 BC. It was founded by Tao Tie and Huan Tuo and was defeated by Yu the Great. Its people were called the Da Mong. Another Miao kingdom may have emerged in Yunnan around 704 BC that was subjugated by the Chinese in the 3rd century BC.[15] In 2002, the Chu language has been identified as perhaps having influence from Tai–Kam and Miao–Yao languages by researchers at University of Massachusetts Amherst.[16]

The Miao were not mentioned again in Chinese records until the Tang dynasty (618–907). In the following period, the Miao migrated throughout southern China and Southeast Asia. They generally inhabited mountainous or marginal lands and took up swidden or slash-and-burn cultivation techniques to farm these lands.

During the Miao Rebellions of the Ming dynasty, thousands of Miao were killed by the imperial forces.[17][18] Mass castrations of Miao boys also took place.[19]

A Qing-era painting depicting a government campaign against the Miao in Hunan, 1795.

During the Qing Dynasty the Miao fought three wars against the empire.[20] The issue was so serious that the Yongzheng emperor sent one of his most officials, Ortai, to be the Viceroy of the provinces with significant Miao populations in 1726, and through 1731, he spent his time putting down rebellions.[21] In 1735 in the southeastern province of Guizhou, the Miao rose up against the government's forced assimilation. Eight counties involving 1,224 villages fought until 1738 when the revolt ended. According to Xiangtan University Professor Wu half the Miao population were affected by the war.

The second war (1795–1806) involved the provinces of Guizhou and Hunan. Shi Sanbao and Shi Liudeng led this second revolt. Again, it ended in failure, but it took 11 years to quell the uprising.[22]

The greatest of the three wars occurred from 1854 to 1873. Zhang Xiu-mei led this revolt in Guizhou until his capture and death in Changsha, Hunan. This revolt affected over one million people and all the neighbouring provinces. By the time the war ended Professor Wu said only 30 percent of the Miao were left in their home regions. This defeat led to the Hmong people migrating out of China into Laos and Vietnam.

During Qing times, more military garrisons were established in southwest China. Han Chinese soldiers moved into the Taijiang region of Guizhou, married Miao women, and the children were brought up as Miao.[23][24] In spite of rebellion against the Han, Hmong leaders made allies with Han merchants.[25]

The imperial government had to rely on political means to bring in Hmong people into the government: they created multiple competing positions of substantial prestige for Miao people to participate and assimilate into the Qing government system. During the Ming and Qing times, the official position of Kiatong was created in Indochina. The Miao would employ the use of the Kiatong government structure until the 1900s when they entered into French colonial politics in Indochina.

During the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Miao played an important role in its birth when they helped Mao Zedong to escape the Kuomintang in the Long March with supplies and guides through their territory.

In Vietnam, a powerful Hmong named Vuong Chinh Duc, dubbed the king of the Hmong, aided Ho Chi Minh's nationalist move against the French, and thus secured the Hmong's position in Vietnam.[26] In Điện Biên Phủ, Hmongs fought on the side of the communist Viet Minh against the pro-French Tai Dam aristocrats. During the Vietnam War, Miao fought on both sides, the Hmong in Laos primarily for the US, across the border in Vietnam for the North-Vietnam coalition, the Chinese-Miao for the Communists. However, after the war the Vietnamese were very aggressive towards the Hmong who suffered many years of reprisals. Most Hmong in Thailand also supported a brief Communist uprising during the war.

Some of the origins of the Hmong and Miao clan names are a result of the marriage of Hmong women to Han Chinese men,[27][28] with distinct Han Chinese-descended clans and lineages practicing Han Chinese burial customs.[29] These clans were called "Han Chinese Hmong" ("Hmong Sua") in Sichuan, and were instructed in military tactics by fugitive Han Chinese rebels.[30] Such Chinese "surname groups" are comparable to the patrilineal Hmong clans and also practice exogamy.[31][32][33][34][35]

Han Chinese male soldiers who fought against the Miao rebellions during the Qing and Ming dynasties were known to have married with non-Han women such as the Miao because Han women were less desirable.[36][37][38] The Wang clan, founded among the Hmong in Gongxian county of Sichuan's Yibin district, is one such clan and can trace its origins to several such marriages around the time of the Ming dynasty suppression of the Ah rebels.[39] Nicholas Tapp wrote that, according to The Story of the Ha Kings in the village, one such Han ancestor was Wang Wu.[40] It is also noted that the Wang typically sided with the Chinese, being what Tapp calls "cooked" as opposed to the "raw" peoples who rebelled against the Chinese.[41][39]

Hmong women who married Han Chinese men founded a new Xem clan among Northern Thailand's Hmong. Fifty years later in Chiangmai two of their Hmong boy descendants were Catholics.[42] A Hmong woman and Han Chinese man married and founded northern Thailand's Lau2, or Lauj, clan, [42], with another Han Chinese man of the family name Deng founding another Hmong clan. Some scholars believe this lends further credence to the idea that some or all of the present day Hmong clans were formed in this way.[43]

Jiangxi Han Chinese are claimed by some as the forefathers of the southeast Guizhou Miao, and Miao children were born to the many Miao women married Han Chinese soldiers in Taijiang in Guizhou before the second half of the 19th century.[44]

Xijiang, a Miao-majority township in Guizhou

The 2000 Chinese census recorded 8,940,116 Miao in mainland China.

Provincial distribution of the Miao in mainland China

County-level distribution of the Miao in mainland China

(Only includes counties or county-equivalents containing >0.25% of mainland China's Miao population.)

Miao fish is a dish made by steaming fish with a mixture of fresh herbs, green peppers, ginger slices and garlic.[49]